


And the Night Inside

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Cars, First Kiss, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's weird how Ed and Colonel Douchenozzle kind of get along late at night.</p>
<p>[What is this – no spoilers?!]</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the Night Inside

**Author's Note:**

> So… [the song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oqDujfyEMk) screamed Roy/Ed at me so loudly that I wrote this to shut it up. XD Can be read as a sequel to [Insomnia](http://archiveofourown.org/works/374299), or can stand alone!

_If there’s discretion that you’ve not abandoned, now’s the time_  
– “End Transmission” – AFI –

 

 

Ed doesn’t see what’s so bewildering about him striding into Roy’s office, slapping both hands down on the edge of the desk, and saying “I need to get out of this.”

Apparently it’s confusing, though, because Roy stares at him blankly for a minute.

“Get out of what, exactly?” Colonel Dumbass asks slowly. “The office you’ve just burst into at eleven at night? Legal trouble? Your corporeal form? Please don’t tell me you’ve accidentally sold yourself into prostitution.”

“Eew,” Ed says. “Besides, if I did that, I’d call Lieutenant Hawkeye, not you. She’d fix it just by glaring at people.” He scowls. “And _anyway_ , I mean ‘this’ like…” He waves his hands to indicate the space, the building, the claustrophobic constructions on every side. “This _city_. I need to get some fresh air. Some _real_ air. Which way’s best to start walking?”

“You are not,” Roy says, “walking to the outskirts of Central at eleven o’clock on a Wednesday.”

Ed frowns harder, not that that ever works. “I am so. If you’re too dumb to tell me, just give me a map.”

Roy sighs the Oh-Pity-Me-for-I-Am-a-Handsome-Martyr sigh, plants his palms on the desk opposite Ed’s, and stands. “I’ll drive you,” he says.

Ed doesn’t really like the tickle of startled appreciation, so he shifts to suspicion. “What’s in it for you?”

Roy twirls his car keys around his index finger and starts for the door. “Intermittently, your bizarre caprices make for amenable diversions.”

“…the fuck?”

“Sometimes you’re amusing.”

“ _Dick_.”

“And I need a break. Come on; we haven’t got all night.”

Ed makes sure to slam the door. “Yeah, we do.”

It’s kind of the only thing they have for sure.

 

 

Ed’s still not really sure why Roy’s doing this, so he stays quiet while they drive. Before too long, the city peters out around them, and the last few streetlights fall away, and it’s just them and the headlights and the road, dark gray on black. Roy doesn’t say anything, which is… all right, really; it feels like they’re on the same page for once, rather than, you know, tearing leaves out of totally different books and balling them up and hurling them at each other.

Ed gives it a couple minutes, and then he points to the outline of some bushes on the shoulder. “Can you park it over there?”

Roy obliges, jerking hard on the wheel, and the car swerves to the side. Ed clings to the door, braces one foot against the glove compartment, delivers his final prayers, and wonders how he could possibly have forgotten when he willingly stepped into this car that _Roy Mustang can’t drive for shit_.

When he thinks it’s over, he cracks an eye open, and they seem to have stopped. He pats himself down with both hands. All of his vital organs appear to be intact, and this looks a lot more like the side of the road than it does like the Gate, so they must be alive.

He pries the door open, staggers out, and slams it behind him. Then he gauges the distance, ignoring the fact that Roy sighs the Oh-Pity-Me-for-I-Am-a-Handsome-Sucker sigh, and climbs up onto the roof. He flops down on his back and looks up at the clouds.

Roy circles around. Ed glances down, and the colonel is giving him an unreadable look. “Ass off the car for a moment, please.”

Damn it. Ed jumps back down—except then Roy opens the back door, takes out his black coat, shakes it loose, and plants a foot on the floor of the car for a boost. He reaches up, stretches, and lays the coat out on the roof, silk lining gleaming in the half-light. “Now the ass may return if it pleases.”

Ed eyes him. “I’m not a _girl_.”

“And my car is not a couch,” Roy says, “yet you insist on treating it as you see fit.”

“Crazy bastard,” Ed says, but he clambers back up, and it _is_ kind of nicer with the coat there.

Roy spends the better part of a minute leaning against the car with his arms crossed, pretending to watch the road, before he cracks and climbs up, too. Ed grins to himself a little, lies down, and folds his hands behind his head.

“Poor night for astronomy,” Roy says.

“Good night for meteorology,” Ed says.

“Touché.”

Ed looks over at Roy where he’s lying with his hands folded on his chest and his hair slipping back off his forehead. “You ev… no, fuck it, never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You know very well that you can’t abort a conversation like that and expect me not to be quite reasonably curious.”

“Just—have you ever—I mean, you’ve even got a car. You ever think about just… leaving? Making a fucking run for it, to hell with everything. Keep going ’til you hit the horizon, never look back.”

Roy is silent for long enough that Ed thinks maybe he’s going to get demoted.

“Yes,” Roy says just before Ed leaps off the car and hides in the bushes. “Several times a day. It’s huge, isn’t it? It’s heavy. The consequences are unimaginable, the stakes are incalculably high, and sometimes it’s too much.”

“I can’t leave, though,” Ed says. “Not even because of all the promises and debts and shit—I don’t think I’d be _capable_ of walking away from Al. Ever. Usually when I—I mean, if I was _going_ to blow time daydreaming, I’d imagine he was just… back, y’know, and he and I could just keep running forever. Pretend like we never got involved in this shit.”

“Reality is an unfortunate side-effect of existence,” Roy says.

“There aren’t enough goddamn _stars_ here,” Ed says. “Not here-here; I _know_ it’s fucking overcast, before you say anything smug, you bastard. Just this whole place. There’s, like, two fucking stars on a clear night. And they both suck.”

Roy goes quiet again, and then he goes soft-voiced and gazing-upward. “The first night in Ishval, I couldn’t sleep because the sky was too bright. I’d never seen stars like that. It looked like someone had spilled crystals all over the night.”

“Al knows all the constellations now,” Ed says. “It’s great, I guess, but I wish he didn’t.”

“Lieutenant Hawkeye joined the military because of me. I said something naïve that she mistook for inspiration.”

“Shit,” Ed says. “We’re the biggest assholes I’ve ever met.”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“That doesn’t fucking excuse anything.”

“I know.”

Ed takes one deep breath and then another. The car engine makes weird little _clink_ and _clang_ noises as it cools down. The air is a hell of a lot cleaner out here.

“I don’t even care,” he says, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to be more or less gentle with the right one. “I don’t care if I live through this shit, as long as I do right by everybody whose lives I’ve fucked with and fucked up. I guess it’s too late. _Fuck_ , Colonel, just—I mean, do you feel like you’re just going to spend your whole life playing catch-up for all the shit you did and didn’t do and should’ve done and did _wrong_ , and it’s just _never_ going to be okay?”

“Frequently,” Roy says. “Ed?”

He drops his hands and glances over. “What?”

Roy sits up and leans down and kisses him, softly. Roy’s mouth is really warm. Thee’s no smirk, no quip, no fanfare; just Roy’s breath and a whisper of a burn.

Roy sits back. Ed stares for a second, and then he manages some indignant sputtering, which is definitely his fucking prerogative. “What the _hell_ —”

“No one your age should be apathetic about mortality,” Roy says. “There are good things, too. Remember that.”

Ed scrubs at his mouth with his sleeve. “I’ll remember that you’re a _pervert_.”

Roy laughs—from his diaphragm, none of that snickering shit he usually does. “Forgive me for trying to lighten things up.”

“No fucking way I’ll forgive you! _Guh_ , you—gross.”

“I promise my cootie infection isn’t contagious; I’ve had it checked out.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Yes, Major Elric, sir.”

“I said _shut it_.”

Roy swallows whatever he was going to say next, and Ed settles down again, and apparently everything is fine.

Except that Roy’s playful little smile has another hint of that _burn_ in it, and it makes Ed’s stomach twinge; and the coat’s warming up just a little underneath his back; and the two stars are coming out; and he knows he can’t exactly take off running from here, but he kind of never wants to leave.


End file.
